Chapter 27: Ri awän - the milpa, from seed to table

Starting point#

Early morning in te Ixk'at's kitchen, near the end of the dry season. Ana, who can hold her own in Kaqchikel by now, has come to spend the day with the family.

ANA: ¿Achike ruxla' re'? K'ok' ninna'.
What is that smell? I smell something burnt.

IXK'AT: ¡Ay! Xek'atitäj jujun wäy pa ruwi' ri xot. Xitzijon awik'in, man xintz'ët ta.
Oh no! Some tortillas got burned on the griddle. I was talking with you and I didn't watch them.

ANA: ¿Achike xk'ulwachitäj? ¿La k'o jun k'ayewal?
What happened? Is something wrong?

IXK'AT: Majun. Xa xek'at jujun wäy. K'o chik ke'en; chanin nb'an chik jub'a'.
Nothing. Just a few tortillas got burned. There is more dough; a few more are quickly made.

MA KAWOQ: K'ok' ruxla' ri rute' q'aq' wakami, ¿peja'?
The kitchen smells a little burnt today, doesn't it?

IXK'AT: Man numak ta rin. Ja ri q'aq', yalan nim.
It is not my fault. It's the fire, it's very big.

MA KAWOQ: Ana, chwa'q nqachäp rutikik ri ixim pa juyu'. ¿La nawajo' yab'e qik'in?
Ana, tomorrow we begin the planting of the corn out in the fields. Do you want to come with us?

ANA: ¡Ja', ninwajo'! Po man wetaman ta achike rub'eyal ntik ri ixim.
Yes, I'd love to! But I don't know how corn is planted.

MA KAWOQ: Majun k'ayewal. Xtink'üt chawäch. Ri awän k'o ruk'aslem, k'o rejqalem. Xtawetamaj eqal eqal.
No problem. I will show you. The milpa has its life and its weight. You will learn it little by little.

IXK'AT: Kixwa' na. Chwa'q nïm ri samaj.
Eat first. Tomorrow the work is big.

Three things in this dialogue are the heart of the chapter. First, xek'atitäj and xk'ulwachitäj: verbs that say something got done or happened without pointing at anyone. Notice how Ixk'at moves through the registers: xek'atitäj "they got burned" (no one's fault), then plain passive xek'at "they were burned", then, teased, the flat denial man numak ta rin "not my fault". Second, Ana's ntik ri ixim "corn is planted": a passive with no doer, the normal way to talk about how things are done. Third, the frame of the whole chapter: rutikik ri ixim "the planting of the corn", the year of work that ends at the table.

How it works#

One plant, many names: the growth stages#

English says "corn" at every stage and adds words when it must ("seed corn", "seedling", "corn on the cob"). Kaqchikel gives each stage of the one plant its own name, and speakers use them precisely. Here is the whole life in order:

The authors' sequel volume states the sequence in three short sentences that are worth reading in the original (its spelling differs slightly from ours; see Usage and dialect notes):

Nab'ey, k'o ri ija'tz, ja re' xcha'öx richin niqatïk. K'a ri', nib'os pe ri awëx. K'a ri', nk'iy pe, ntok awän. (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 46)

"First there is the seed; that is what was chosen for planting. Then the sprouts come up. Then it grows and becomes awän."

Every verb here earns its keep. Xcha'öx "was chosen" is the passive of -cha' "choose" (Chapter 17): the seed ears are picked out at harvest, and nobody needs to say by whom. Nb'os pe "sprouts up" comes with the directional pe "hither" (Chapter 14), because the plant comes up toward the world of people; the same pe rides along in nk'iy pe "grows up". And ntok awän "it becomes awän" uses -ok "enter" for "turn into", a use you met with professions in Chapter 24. The stages keep going the same way: ye'ok äj "they become green ears", and for the last change the language uses the reflexive verb -po' -i' "transform oneself", the same verb the mountain-lord stories use for shape-shifting: ri äj nupo' ri' jäl "the green ear turns itself into a dried ear". Speakers talk about the field's calendar with töq clauses (Chapter 22):

Around the core stages sits a halo of part-words, all built with possession (Chapter 4): patz'än "the stalk", ruxaq awän "the stalk's leaf", tzilik' (also atzik') "the tassel", tzami'y "the cornsilk", pi'q "the cob" (once the grain is off), jo'q "the dried husks", rij äj "the green husks", ruwi' jäl "the dry silk on the ear". Even the enemies have names: ruchikopil ri jäl "the weevil" (literally "the dried ear's little animal") and tür, the gray corn smut that Mexicans prize as huitlacoche. And the sequel's growth-stage sidebar shows that this habit of naming young stages runs through the whole plant world: young fruits are e pu'y (downy) or e altu't (tender, milky; a green äj is altu't ruwäch), and young beans are raxjal. You do not need these three actively; recognize them as the same idea applied beyond maize.

The field year: the work, month by month#

Now the work words. The whole activity is tikonïk "planting" (from -tik "plant", Chapter 23); the person is tikonel "farmer"; the harvest of the ears is jach'onïk or jach'oj (from -jäch' "harvest the ears"). The year, told with the ordinal months of Chapter 9:

A few of these deserve a closer look.

Clearing and planting. -jös is "scrape, clear (with a tool)"; the noun josoj "hoeing, weeding" names the job. The tool is the asaron "hoe" (a Spanish loan, azadón). Planting is done with -tik: the farmer digs with -k'öt, drops in the seed, and covers it with -müq "bury": numüq ri ija'tz rik'in jub'a' ulew "he covers the seed with a little earth". Land is measured in k'an "cuerda", and one of the ways men size each other up, the sequel's essay notes, is by how many k'an a man can plant in a day. Grain is measured by the fistful: jumoq' ixim "a fistful of corn".

Tending. The two hoeings, jikoj and chenoj, both turn weeds under: nqajös ri q'ayis, nqamüq chuxe' ri ulew "we scrape off the weeds and bury them under the soil". The b'oloj banks earth against the stalks so the wind cannot take them: richin man yetzaq ta ri awän roma ri kaq'iq' "so that the plants don't fall because of the wind". Notice that awän, though it looks singular, freely takes plural agreement when it means the plants: yetzaq ri awän "the corn plants fall", and with positionals (Chapter 18) e q'ochöl jujun awän "some plants are bent over". A scarecrow, poy (you met one in the trickster tale of Chapter 25), is stood up in the field, -pab'a' (Chapter 18), against the freeloaders: ri kuk "the squirrel", ri k'el "the parakeet", ri aq'awinäq "the raccoon" (literally "night person").

Harvest and storage. -jäch' takes the dried ears off the stalks; they are carried in a ya'l "net bag", with -ju' "put into": nqaju' ri jäl pa taq ya'l "we put the ears into net bags". At home they are stored, -yïk, in the k'ujay "corncrib" (Chapter 23), and shelled as needed with -b'ïq (Chapter 23). The best ears are chosen, -cha', as next year's ija'tz; the poor little half-filled ears, muk', go to the chickens.

Rajawal Juyu': asking before you take#

Field work in the sequel's readings is never purely technical, and one figure appears again and again: the Rajawal Juyu', the Lord of the Mountain, the owner-spirit of the wild land (from ajaw "lord, owner", possessed rajawal "its lord", Chapter 21). In the stories, the growing corn and the harvested ears have kajawal, "their lords", too, and the proper thing to do before taking anything is to ask. One of the sequel's stories, in which the mountain lord takes the shape of a young woman to teach an orphan boy the harvest, puts the rule in her mouth:

Töq nawelesaj ri jäl, k'o chi nak'utuj utzil chi re rajawal ri jäl chuqa chi re rajawal rujuyu'... (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 58)

"When you take out the dried ears, you must ask a favor of the lord of the ears and of the lord of their mountain..."

The grammar is all old friends: k'o chi "one must" (Chapter 16), -k'utuj utzil chre "ask a favor of, ask leave of" (-k'utuj "ask" plus utzil "goodness, a favor", with the recipient in chre, Chapter 21). The story adds a reason in the middle voice you are about to learn: ask first, chi ke ri' majun k'ayewal xtilitäj "so that no trouble will turn up".

Treat this as what it is: a living belief and courtesy, not folklore for tourists. In the sequel's dialogues a father teaches his sons to give thanks to ri Ajaw at planting and to speak gently even to the animals' lords; families differ, towns differ, and in Tecpán, a center of Maya spirituality, talk about maize runs more to its sacred meanings than to yields. The respectful learner's move is the same as the polite guest's in Chapter 2: follow your hosts. If ma Kawoq pauses at the edge of the field before the first hole is dug, Ana pauses too. The corn itself is spoken of with the respect word loq'oläj "holy, revered": ri loq'oläj ixim "the holy corn", which the sequel's texts say has rejqalem, "weight, importance" - a noun worth owning, since it names what this whole chapter is about: rejqalem ri ixim "the importance of maize".

The middle voice: -täj, "it got ...-ed"#

Now the chapter's main grammar. Chapter 17 gave you three voices: active (agent and patient both on the verb: xuk'ät "she burned it"), passive (patient only, agent gone or demoted to a roma phrase: xk'at "it was burned"), and antipassive (agent only: xk'aton "she did burning"). Kaqchikel has a fourth, the middle voice, formed with the suffix -täj. A middle verb is intransitive, its subject is the patient, and, this is the point, no agent exists anywhere in the sentence or behind it. The event just happened: by itself, by accident, by nobody. English gets close with "got": "the window got broken".

The sequel's grammar teaches it with a three-way set that is worth quoting exactly:

a. Ri xtän xuk'ät ri wäy. The girl burned the tortillas. b. Xek'at ri wäy. The tortillas were burned. c. Xek'atitäj. They got burned. (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 228)

Take the (c) form apart:

x-e-k'at-itäj
COMPL-3pB-burn-MID
"they got burned"

MID is our gloss for the middle suffix. The verb is intransitive, so it carries only a Set B (absolutive) marker, exactly like xeb'e "they went". Compare the three voices on one root:

Formation. Start from the passive stem (root vowel tensed, Chapter 17) and add -täj. Maxwell writes the suffix -(i)täj, because a linking vowel usually appears and its quality has to be learned verb by verb: some verbs take -i- (k'atitäj, paxitäj), most echo the root vowel (b'anatäj, tzakatäj, jok'otäj, puq'utäj, tz'etetäj), and a few attach -täj directly (yojtäj, tijtäj). Here is the attested inventory this book uses; when in doubt, reach for one of these rather than inventing:

When to use it. The middle is the voice of accidents, of processes that run by themselves, and of tact. Three typical situations:

1. No agent exists. Xtzakatäj ri kinäq'. "The beans came out done." Nobody "cooked them done"; the pot and the fire did their slow work. The sequel's kitchen vocabulary even defines doneness this way: retal richin xtzakatäj, "the sign that it has finished cooking".
2. The agent is unknown. Xpaxitäj ri xara. "The jug got shattered." You found it in pieces; you are not accusing anyone.
3. The agent is known but you are being kind (or careful). Ixk'at burned the tortillas herself, and said xek'atitäj. English speakers do exactly this with "the tortillas got burned". The passive xek'at already softens; the middle erases.

The mirror-image warning: because the middle has no agent at all, you cannot add one. Xek'at ri wäy roma ri q'aq' "the tortillas were burned by the fire" is fine (passive + roma, Chapters 17 and 21); xek'atitäj roma... with a doer is not. If you want to name who or what did it, use the passive or go back to the active.

¿Achike xb'anatäj? Asking what happened#

Two middles have become the everyday way to ask "what happened?", with no finger pointed at anyone:

-k'ulwachij is a transitive verb "befall, happen to (someone)", and it gives you the personal version of the question. The sequel's grammar gives the form ¿Achike xaruk'ulwachij? "What happened to you? What befell you?" (p. 229). Take it apart and you find only Chapter 11 machinery:

achike  x-a-ru-k'ulwachij
what    COMPL-2sB-3sA-befall
"what befell you?"

The subject is the mysterious "it" that happens (3sA ru-); you are the object (2sB at-, reduced to a- before ru-, the rule you know from yarutz'ët "she sees you"). Answers come back in the middle voice:

The process register: how things are made#

Put the passive and the middle together and you get the register Kaqchikel uses for recipes, crafts, and farm work: a chain of verbs with no doer anywhere, because the point is the process, not the person. You have been reading this register all chapter: Ana's achike rub'eyal ntik ri ixim "how corn is planted", the seed that xcha'öx "was chosen". Chapter 23 told the tortilla story with te Ixk'at as the subject of every verb. Here is the same knowledge the agentless way, the way it is spoken when anyone (or no one in particular) does it:

Look at the machinery: root passives (nb'iq, njok', nch'aj, nb'an, all just the tensed root, Chapter 17), derived passives in -x (nya'öx, nroqowisäx, nkusäx; the sequel attests xroqowisäx and xsa'öx "was roasted" in exactly this use), one plain intransitive (ntel), and one middle for the process reaching its own end (xjok'otäj). Two register notes. First, this is not "incorrect shortcut Kaqchikel": it is how the sequel's own recipe texts run, and how a cook answers ¿Achike rub'eyal nb'an ri sub'an? "how are tamalitos made?". Second, the moment you want to praise or blame a person, you leave the register: Ja ri te Ixk'at xb'anon re wäy re' "it was Ixk'at who made these tortillas" (agent-focus antipassive, Chapter 17).

The four colors of jäl#

Maize comes in four colors, and each has a name built on jäl plus a color root (Chapter 8):

In a story told to the authors in Tecpán, four quarreling sisters shut up overnight in the wooden jail are gone by morning; in their place the officers find ears of corn scattered on the floor:

K'o ri saqijäl, k'o ri raxwach, k'o ri kaqajäl, chuqa ri q'anajäl. (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 60)

"There was white maize, there was blue maize, there was red maize, and yellow maize."

The story explains a real preference: the white sister was the one everyone loved, and to this day saqijäl is the corn of every celebration, xab'achike nimaq'ij "any festival at all", while the other three appear only now and then. The sequel's essay adds the dietary fact: white, yellow, and blue are eaten and debated endlessly (which makes the best tortillas?); red is not eaten, being reserved for ritual use. So: Man ntij ta ri kaqajäl. "Red maize is not eaten" - the process register again, doing cultural work.

Ruxla': the smell words#

A kitchen chapter needs noses. The key noun is ruxla' "its smell, its odor" (almost always possessed, like a relational noun): ¿Achike ruxla' re'? "what is this smell?", jeb'ël ruxla' "it smells lovely". Around it, Kaqchikel has a set of precise smell adjectives, several with a matching process verb in -ïr "become" (the versive of Chapter 15) plus the directional pe, for a smell that comes over something:

Two taste-words travel with these: ki' "sweet, delicious" and simil "delicious, exquisite" (Chapter 23), with the sequel's variant simisöj "tasty". The verb for putting your nose to something is -sëq "sniff, smell (something)": taseqa' ri q'utu'n "smell the food" (the lax ë tenses before the imperative suffix, Chapter 13). Smell talk is a whole conversational genre; being able to say ¡Jub'ül ruxla' ri q'utu'n! as you sit down is worth ten grammar points.

The new crops: aruwejis china and rujolom ichaj#

Walk the roads around Tecpán today and the hillsides are not only awän and kinäq'. Two of the export crops that have spread through the highlands even carry their newness in their names: aruwejis china "snow peas" (from Spanish arveja china) and rujolom ichaj "broccoli", literally "the greens' head". Tomatoes, xkoya', are an older neighbor grown on a new scale.

The sequel devotes two readings to this shift and is carefully double-voiced about it, and this book will be too. On the good side: the prices. Man junam ta ri rajil "the price is not the same" as corn's, and the earnings, ch'akoj, have lifted whole towns; families can stay on their own land and keep farming together instead of migrating. On the hard side: these crops demand money up front, constant care, and chemicals. The word is aq'om, which you learned in Chapter 24 as "medicine"; the fields get itzel aq'om, "bad medicine", pesticide, and the sequel's reading counts the costs: roma ri itzel aq'om, yek'is ri taq wonon, ri ruchikopil kab' "because of the pesticide, the wasps and the honeybees are dying off", and the crops kik'wan k'iy aq'om chi kij "carry a lot of chemicals on them" to the very market stalls where they look so clean and green.

And maize? The essays are honest: with each generation, fewer Kaqchikel families farm it, for want of land as much as of will; young people study, teach, trade, migrate. Yet the same essays report that even market vendors with almost no land keep a few symbolic rows of awän in the courtyard, and that some broccoli farmers say the new crop's whole point is that it lets them keep living the old way, on their land, working as a family. Corn grown by one's own hands still means what it meant: hard work, community, home. That is the quiet argument of ma Kawoq's last words in the reading below.

Reading: Ri rujuna' ri awän#

Ma Kawoq tells Ana the year of the milpa.

Ke re' nutzijoj ri ma Kawoq chre ri Ana:

"Pa rox ik' nqachäp ri samaj pa juyu'. Ninjös ri ulew rik'in ri asaron, ninwelesaj ri q'ayis. Töq majani nqachäp ri tikonïk, nqak'utuj utzil chre ri Ajaw chuqa' chre ri Rajawal Juyu'; ke ri' kik'utun kan ri qati't qamama'. K'a ri' nqatik ri ija'tz: nink'öt jun jul, ninya' ri ija'tz chupam, ninmüq rik'in jub'a' ulew. Kaji' k'an nqatik; jun k'an chik richin ichaj.

Töq npe ri jöb' pa rukaj ik', nb'os pe ri awex. Pa ro' ik' nqab'än ri jikoj: nqajös ri q'ayis, nqamüq chuxe' ri ulew. Pa ruwaq ik' ri chenoj, k'a ri' ri b'oloj: nqaya' ulew chirij raqän ri awän, richin man yetzaq ta roma ri kaq'iq'. Ninpab'a' jun poy pa runik'ajal ri tiko'n, richin nkixib'ij ki' ri taq chikopi': ri kuk, ri k'el, ri aq'awinäq.

Töq ntel pe ri tzilik' pa ruwi' ri awän, yepe ri och'. Pa ruwuq ik' ye'ok äj. Nqasa' jujun taq äj pa q'aq', nqatij rik'in atz'am chuqa' limonix; ri te Ixk'at nub'än ki' sub'an. Po man nqajöq' ta konojel ri äj: k'o chi ye'ok jäl.

Pa rujulaj ik' chaqi'j chik ri awän. Nqajäch' ri jäl, nqaju' pa taq ya'l, nqak'waj pa qochoch. Nqayïk pa k'ujay. K'a ri' ri te Ixk'at nub'ïq ri ixim, nucha' ri ija'tz richin ri juna' apo. Ke ri' k'o qixim ronojel ri juna': richin ri wäy, richin ri q'or, richin ri sub'an.

Ri a Tz'ikin tijonel pa Chiq'a'l; man k'o ta k'iy ramaj richin ri juyu'. Po töq nqatik chuqa' töq nqajäch', npe, yojruto'. E k'iy alab'oni' wakami man nkib'än ta chik awän; k'o samaj kichin pa tinamit. Po ri qawän k'a k'o na. Ri ixim man nqalöq' ta: nqatik, nqajäch', nqatij."

This is what ma Kawoq tells Ana:

"In March we take up the work in the fields. I scrape the ground with the hoe and remove the weeds. Before we begin the planting, we ask leave of God and of the Lord of the Mountain; so our grandmothers and grandfathers taught. Then we plant the seed: I dig a hole, put the seed in, and cover it with a little earth. We plant four cuerdas, and one more for greens.

When the rains come in April, the sprouts come up. In May we do the first hoeing: we scrape off the weeds and bury them under the soil. In June the second hoeing, and then the mounding: we bank earth against the base of the plants so that they don't fall in the wind. I stand a scarecrow in the middle of the planting, so that the animals get scared off: the squirrel, the parakeet, the raccoon.

When the tassel comes out at the top of the plants, the young ears come. In July they become green ears. We roast a few ears in the fire and eat them with salt and lime; Ixk'at makes fresh-corn tamalitos. But we don't pull all the ears: some have to become dried ears.

In November the field is dry. We harvest the ears, put them in net bags, and carry them home. We store them in the corncrib. Then Ixk'at shells the grain and chooses the seed for the year to come. That way we have our corn all year: for the tortillas, for the atole, for the tamalitos.

Tz'ikin is a teacher in Comalapa; he doesn't have much time for the fields. But when we plant and when we harvest, he comes and helps us. Many young men today no longer make milpa; there is work for them in town. But our milpa is still here. Our corn we do not buy: we plant it, we harvest it, we eat it."

Patterns at a glance#

The life of the plant

The four voices on one root

Middle voice formation: passive stem + linking vowel + -täj

What happened?

Smells

Vocabulary#

Reference: more field and kitchen words#

Usage and dialect notes#

• The sequel's spelling. The quotes in this chapter keep their source's spelling, which writes lax vowels the newer orthography hears in more places: awëx, q'ayïs, k'ïy, chïk, töq, niqatïk, wakamïn where this book writes awex, q'ayis, k'iy, chik, töq/toq, nqatik, wakami. Same words, same speakers, twenty years of orthographic drift. Read both without blinking.
• -jäch' means "harvest the ears". Our main source's dictionary glosses it "harvest", and the sequel's own chapter vocabulary agrees ("tapiscar"), though its glossary once says "shuck". Shucking, taking the husks off, is -elesaj rij or -pöch' (Chapter 23). Keep the two jobs apart.
• chuw or chüw. The 2006 dictionary writes chüw "stinky" with a lax vowel; the sequel writes chuw and its verb -chuwïr. This book writes chuw.
• k'ok' is two smells and a texture. The dictionary says "smelling spicy" (toasting chiles); the sequel's smell sidebar says "burnt smell or taste" and uses it for scorched food, and its kitchen list also has k'ok' ke'en "finely ground dough". All three are attested; context sorts them out.
• q'or twice. q'or "atole" and q'or "lazy" (Chapter 24) are homophones. Nuqüm q'or ri q'or would be "the lazy one drinks atole"; nobody will say it, but everyone will enjoy that you know it.
• awän agreement. Awän is grammatically a mass-like noun but takes plural agreement when the individual plants are in view: yetzaq ri awän, e q'ochöl ri awän. With the field as a place, singular: nim ri awän "the milpa is big".
• tür, the smut. In Mexico huitlacoche is a delicacy; the sequel notes that the Hopi toast and eat it too, but wawe' Iximulew man ntij ta, here in Guatemala it is not eaten. Children paint their faces with its black dust at harvest, and its powder is dabbed on cuts as a remedy: sokotajik "wound" is itself a middle-voice noun, "what got injured".
• Respect without theater. Asking leave of the Rajawal Juyu' is a belief some families hold deeply, others lightly, others not at all. Describe it accurately (nqak'utuj utzil chre), follow your hosts' lead in the field, and never perform it as a party trick.

Pitfalls for English speakers

1. English "burned" hides three Kaqchikel sentences. Someone did it: xuk'ät. It was done (doer known or nameable): xk'at. It just happened: xk'atitäj. Choose on purpose.
2. No agent with the middle. "It got ruined by the rain" needs the passive or active (ri jöb' xuyöj, or xyoj roma ri jöb'), not xyojtäj roma.
3. The middle is intransitive: Set B only, and plural subjects show it: xek'atitäj ri wäy, not xk'atitäj when the tortillas are plural.
4. The linking vowel of -täj is learned per verb (b'anatäj but k'atitäj but yojtäj). Stick to attested forms; do not manufacture new ones freely.
5. ¿Achike xk'ulwachitäj? asks about events; ¿Achike xaruk'ulwachij? asks about you. Answering the first with "I'm fine" confuses; answer with what happened: Majun, xa xpaxitäj jun läq.
6. Growth stages are not interchangeable. Asking to buy awän at the market (you want äj or ixim) is like asking a US farmer to sell you "a corn". Use the stage you mean.

Looking back and ahead#

This chapter put to work nearly everything Part I built: the passive of Chapter 17 (which had only footnoted -täj; now it is yours), the positionals of Chapter 18 standing, bending, and scattering things around the field, the töq clauses of Chapter 22 carrying the agricultural year, the months of Chapter 9, and the kitchen of Chapter 23, now narrated the agentless way. The respect language around the Rajawal Juyu' leans on the relational nouns of Chapter 21. The chapters ahead in Part II keep this shape, one domain of Kaqchikel life at a time, and the middle voice will keep paying rent in every one of them: things get woven, get sold, get built, and, now and then, get burned.